Chinese Legal History Between Tradition and Beyond Modernity: Liang Zhiping’s ‘Horizons of Legal History’ Revisited

Abstract

“Horizons of Legal History: Methods, Interests, and Paradigms” by Liang Zhiping 梁治平, originally published in 2002, offers a concise overview of the major stages of Chinese legal-historical research embedded in a genealogy of the field. Newly translated into English here, this historical epistemology reconstructs Chinese legal historiography through the lens of its evolving self-understanding as an academic discipline and ongoing search for a specificum. Nearly 25 years after its publication, Liang’s call for a self-reflexive legal history, grounded in society and practice and open to insights from history, cultural, and social studies, appears more timely than ever.